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Stretch Limos No Longer A Mainstream Reach

Time was when limousines were the almost exclusive purview of the affluent, the powerful and the celebrated – with allowances for the ritualistic: brides, grooms, prom queens and deceased.

“Years ago, limos were mainly for the rich,” says Julie Herring, owner of Clearwater-based Julie’s Limousines and Coachworks Inc. “Now, it’s much more mainstream. They’re affordable.” For the record, that means an industry range of $60-$160 an hour depending on vehicle, amenities and fuel surcharge.

“There is a decided trend toward a younger clientele,” notes Herring, who has owned Julie’s for 19 years. “Those in their 30’s who have landed the right job, are now making real money and going up the ladder. They rent a lot of limousines.”

Bachelor-bachelorette parties and bar-hopping accounts for a lot of that business, adds Herring (with discounts if a wedding booking results). “They’ll go from the Blue Martini (International Plaza) to SoHo and Ybor,” says Herring. “It’s a familiar route.”

The perspective is no different at Tampa’s Premier Limousine. “We’re seeing more and more young professionals, the up-and-comers,” says sales manager Victor Chambers. “Renting a limo is part of doing business. But when it’s for nights out on the town – they like Hummers. And they like being safe. As one customer told me, ‘$400 is a lot cheaper than a $7,000 D.U.I.'”

And they like the cachet.

“For some people, the luxury limo represents a chance to play a role or indulge in a fantasy,” says Tampa psychologist Alan Lewis. “You get a chance to look like you normally don’t. It’s fun.”

Which helps explain the popularity of Hummers, the latest in “exotics.” It’s not just Cadillacs and Lincolns that are being stretched these days, points out Chambers. If you cut it down the middle, add paneling, reinforce the frame and modify the engine, you can also have a Stretch Porsche or a Stretch Lexus.

On the inside, there’s a lot more than a bar and NBA-style leg room. Premier has the largest H2 Hummer in central Florida. It seats 18-20 and has five flat-screen TVs, a DVD/CD surround sound system, sub-woofers galore, mirrored roofing, granite counters, leather upholstery with snakeskin motif, laser strobe and fiber optic mood lighting, private VIP bar and entertainment system, a lighted disco style floor, lava lamps and 5-passenger VIP seating in the rear.

Not to be overlooked, however, is the chauffeur.

“You know, a great stereo is still important, and the vehicle has got to be pretty and clean,” says Mickey Velilla, the owner of St. Petersburg’s Patriot Limousine. “But the most important factor is the chauffeur. They can make the difference. They have to think like a concierge, be flexible and understand etiquette – and act like a host.”

And, chances are, they are driving to a party near you this holiday season.

“The holidays mean real busy, real fast,” says Herring of Julie’s. “We’re talking company parties, and everybody has Christmas parties. And they get earlier each year.”

For Patriot, which is top-heavy in corporate clientele, the holiday season is a reverse of the normal pattern. “Things change drastically,” explains Velilla. “Probably 70% of the business is parties. It took a while after 9/11, but I think people feel good about spending money again.”

Some Reflections And Suggestions In Wilma’s Wake

Maybe, just maybe, we can start to exhale — meteorologically speaking. We missed Wilma’s havoc-wreaking wake, although somewhere, we all fear, is an undodged, categorical bullet with our name on it. And the hurricane season officially has almost another month to go. The Greek alphabet is not just for fraternities.

A few postscripts from another crucible in the tropical cross-hairs:

*Frost warnings, of course, will next loom, but landscape concerns – after having emotionally rationalized the loss of everything for the second consecutive year – seem kind of whiney . How bad can it be if it doesn’t come with infra-red imagery, cones of Armageddon, Citizens Property Insurance Corp. subplots, FEMA alerts, presidential cameos or looting scenarios?

*The media will always do what they do — some better than others. But public service is hardly their raison d’etre . They keep score. Hence, the affiliates’ foreboding teases and the marketing of “teams” with on-site, histrionic reporters and high-tech forecasting systems with Hummer-like names such as VIPIR and Vortex and Titan.

*I’m still boycotting any station with a meteorologist wearing suspenders . A little too contrived and show bizzy for my taste in a time of trust. I am, however, accepting of that look-at-me look when car shopping.

*As for the national coverage, two words: Al Roker . The “Today Show” weatherman may re-think that gastric bypass the next time he risks becoming a ballast-challenged, hype-seeking missile.

*The ongoing challenge we all face is to be informed – but not bludgeoned by the drumbeat, impending doom hurricane coverage. As a coping device, I resist the urge to frequently flip on the TV, even if it’s for a market update or West Coast scores. There are official weather service trajectory updates a couple of times a day. That’s enough. It keeps me out of the colorful, continuous loop of all Caribbean hurl all the time.

*It’s also advisable, for the same reason, to check e-mail less often. Never, I noticed, did the AOL headlines seem so benignly welcome as the day after Wilma’s destructive dash through South Florida. You had to look hard to find “Wilma Pushes TV Reporters Around.” Otherwise, it was practically refreshing to see: “Who’s Phishing in Your E-Mail?”, “Cheney Implicated in CIA Leak Case,” “Vote: Is It A Lost Year For Bush?”, “Your I.Q. Going Up In Smoke?”, “Tea Sales Boom But Are Results For Real?” and “Tonya Harding Strikes Again.”

*Where is it written that all hurricane coverage must include requisite, trite footage and photos of surfers doing their imbecilic best to trivialize impending disaster – or at least severe distress — for the rest of us with families, houses and different priorities?

*Two more words: Anderson Cooper .

*One final word: Geraldo .

Road Worriers

Perhaps someone should start taking out ads and distributing leaflets warning visitors to this state that they run the risk of meeting a dangerously impaired Floridian on the road. Armed, as it were, with poor motor skills and/or dementia. Maybe that will prompt the state to get serious about culling the ranks of its unsafe senior motorists.

The most recent example of the problem – and its tragic implications – was the 93-year-old Pinellas Park man who fatally hit a pedestrian and drove another three miles with the body lodged in the car’s windshield. Ralph Parker, the motorist, thought the body had dropped from the sky. He suffers from dementia.

According to Florida’s Department of Highway Safety and Motor Vehicles, drivers 80 and older are required to pass a vision test – nothing more — to renew their license. It’s good for six years, absent a traffic conviction or accident.

By then, as was the case with Parker, it could be too late. Adequate vision – albeit with a touch of dementia, hearing deficits and poor reaction time — will still result in a validly-renewed Florida driver’s license.

In a state with some 270,000 elderly drivers, this is unconscionable.

Sure, the issue is emotionally charged, and any effort at screening will be met with resistance in certain quarters — notably AARP, which has a history of stonewalling age-based restrictions on older drivers. The specter of age bias and the heavy hand of government intrusion will be raised.

But public safety trumps all other agendas. So should common sense.

Right now, unfortunately, it’s largely left to families to play the heavy – and the grim reaper – by asking for a senior’s car keys. Arguably, not enough do.

The state has to step in and set some meaningful, legal limits – and, yes, there’s a level of arbitrariness that is inevitable, whether it’s 75, 70 or the onset of Social Security. But serious screening – a physical, a field test and a vision test – must be part of any effective licensing procedure. Helping our elderly stay safe, while looking out for everyone else, should be the goal.

Perhaps Gov. Jeb Bush could get behind a campaign to start seriously screening elderly drivers — and avoiding unnecessary, tragic – and inevitable – deaths on the road. It might even be a better legacy issue than FCATs, privatization and Wilma response. It may even pre-empt another leaflet distribution to tourists.

Return Of The (30-Something) Natives

You can, apparently, go home again.

Less than five years ago and approaching his 40th birthday, Frank Sanchez returned to his hometown of Tampa. He was a Harvard grad who had been assistant secretary for aviation and international affairs in the Clinton Administration. He came home to be with his aging parents and to run for mayor.

He lost in a run-off, but remains rooted here. He runs an international consulting firm and is a major player on the Bay Area business, civic and political scenes.

“There are terrific opportunities for entrepreneurs here, it’s an easy place to get involved in and the quality of life is great,” gushes Sanchez. “I still get a smile on my face as I leave TIA and head home.”

His perspective is illustrative of an incipient trend.

The 30-something generation is gradually finding the Tampa Bay market to its liking. The 2.5 million-population Tampa Metropolitan Statistical Area is the second largest in the Southeast. Tampa Bay ranked 12th among “America’s Best Places to Live and Work” in Employment Review’s June 2003 issue. Inc. Magazine recently ranked the Tampa Bay area 14th on its list of the 25 best major markets to start a business. Tampa Bay is the 13th largest TV market and regularly receives national kudos on cost-of-living, unemployment and quality-of-life criteria. Plus, Tampa, the region’s economic hub, is now experiencing rapidly ratcheting urban infill that appeals to young professionals as much as empty nesters.

The last two years have seen urban planners, artists, politicians and chamber of commerce types coalescing around the priority of keeping, attracting – and reclaiming — the best, brightest and edgiest. In fact, the Tampa Chamber of Commerce has established a leadership subgroup, Emerge Tampa, to target the 21-35 demographic.

The following are among those who couldn’t wait to get out of Dodge at 18 – only to return as 30-somethings making a mark in their hometowns.

Ben Older, 34

Few have taken a more circuitous route back home than Tampa Prep grad Ben Older. He returned to Tampa in 2001 — via Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, Miami and Europe.

He has an undergraduate degree in communications from the University of Southern California and a law degree from the University of Miami. He also has a cache of eclectic experiences from having played in and managed bands on two continents – as well as having owned an entertainment-management company in Los Angeles.

Older is a practicing attorney, an entrepreneur, and a singer-guitarist-percussionist. He’s a partner in Older & Lundy, a co-owner of the Lotus Club, an Ybor City “ultra lounge,” and lead vocalist in the band “Mobetta” that plays at St. Bart’s Island House in Tampa’s SoHo section.

“My dream was to have my own law firm, and I could do that a lot sooner here than in Miami or LA,” explains Older. “I also love music. Tampa is the perfect place to do all that I do simultaneously.

And then there’s his morning ritual — jogging along Bayshore. “Sometimes I see dolphins,” he says. “Now that’s cool.

“When I came back,” recalls Older, “it felt right. Maybe I was really seeing it for the first time.”

Beth Reynolds, 38

As a kid, Beth Reynolds was fascinated by cameras. As a teenager, she loved meandering downtown St. Petersburg with her Minolta looking for meaning in the mundane.

A photo-journalist was born – one who wouldn’t long be satisfied with the prosaic tableaus of St. Petersburg. “I left when I was 18 and said, ‘See ‘ya, St. Pete, I’m going to see the world.'”

She headed to the University of North Carolina-Greensboro and earned a degree in mass communications. She then landed a staff photographer position with the Bristol (CT) Press and later graduated from the University of Hartford Art School with a master’s in fine arts.

The Shorecrest School alum finally yielded to her mother’s entreaties touting downtown revitalization and a hip arts scene and returned in the late ’90s. She hooked up with The Arts Center in St. Petersburg, where she is now photography and digital program coordinator. She also founded “The Photo-Documentary Press,” published two books and earned numerous national photo-journalism honors. She became a sought-after speaker/panelist and recognized for her one-woman shows.

“I love journalism and I work at a fine arts organization,”says Reynolds. “I’m a hybrid; this is great.”She also loves where she lives.

“St. Pete has an urban as well as a small town feel,” notes Reynolds. “But this whole area is arts friendly. My home is Tampa Bay. I can do everything I need to here.”

David Stamps, 34

For David Stamps III, the die was cast early.

His parents were prominent USF professors. Achievement was a given – and family educational roots coursed through Atlanta’s pre-eminent African-American institutions: Morehouse College and Spelman College.

By the time Stamps had graduated from Tampa’s King High School, he had been vice president and president of the student government, an academic standout — and Atlanta bound.

He earned a degree in finance from Morehouse, hung out with the offspring of Bill Cosby, Maynard Jackson and Julian Bond and opened his own music management company. Then a dose of reality best summarized by a music-business adage: “You don’t make money till they make money.”

“I regrouped,” Stamps recalls humbly. He also came home, went to Stetson Law School in Gulfport, saw Tampa Bay through more mature eyes – and hasn’t looked back.

“After I came back, I started seeing change all around me,” says Stamps. “I wanted to be a part of it.”

He has his own law firm in Hyde Park, where he specializes in commercial real estate, and enjoys pivoting to the good life from his Harbour Island residence.

“The opportunities are here,” notes Stamps. “My practice has the same potential as the area. Plus the weather is gorgeous and the landscapes unbelievable. Why would I leave?”

Josh Bomstein, 30>/p>In the back of his mind, Josh Bomstein always had a Plan B. It comes with the territory when your dad, Alan Bomstein, is president and CEO of the successful, privately held Creative Contractors Inc. of Clearwater.

But first the Berkeley Prep grad had something to prove. The family business, he reasoned, was “always there,” but he “felt the need to achieve something on my own. And to expand my horizons.”

Which probably explains why the son of a builder became an anthropology/religion major at Emory University in Atlanta. “It was about learning to think well,” he says. But he also took business courses “for balance.”

His self-realization sojourn would take him to Santa Barbara, CA. To teaching special education and working in sales. He was the 2003 National “Rookie of the Year” for McGraw-Hill Companies.

He married and returned with his wife Lindsay last December. He’s now business development manager for Creative Contractors, a 55-employee operation that does about $70 million a year in commercial projects. He’s the web master and the go-to guy for PowerPoint presentations.

“Moving back was figuratively and literally about building and growing,” says Bomstein. “A family, a career, a community. It’s about a lot more than bricks and mortar.

“And I tend to see things regionally,” adds Bomstein. “I see the beauty and the variety — from the beaches to Ybor City. And there’s a kind of laid-back feeling that I’m appreciating more and more.”

Michael Peters, 35

Michael Peters could be the poster boy for CreativeTampaBay, the regional clearinghouse for the “creative class.”

He’s a former art director for Grey Worldwide, the prestigious New York advertising agency. He was becoming a player in the world’s ad-and-image epicenter and living the cosmopolitan life that goes with a Manhattan brownstone.

When his wife Leigh became pregnant, his career prism altered. A fifth-floor walkup wouldn’t be family friendly.

“Growing up in Tampa, I mis
sed the water,” explains the Plant High and University of Alabama grad. “And New York is an eat ’em up type place.”

In an augur of karmic proportions, they moved back to Tampa on Sept. 10, 2001.

It’s been all upside since. The Peters family now includes a son and daughter; they live in a bungalow in Hyde Park; and Michael is president and creative director of his own ad agency, Spark Branding House in Ybor.

This summer Spark was the only Tampa Bay agency to earn a national ADDY award. “Tampa used to be more traditional,” observes Peters. “Now it has more bullets. There are many more major brands here.

“We’re a boutique agency doing high-end work,” points out Peters. “It can definitely be done here. Plus, I get to play with my kids in my back yard.”

Inclusive Exclusions

In a decision that couldn’t possibly please everyone, the Hillsborough School Board recently voted to end vacation days for all religious holidays. However it came about, it was the right call. For the record, it came about because a group of Muslims had asked for a religious holiday not unlike those accorded Christians and Jews.

Given precedents such as Good Friday and Yom Kippur, it was not unreasonable. In the spirit of inclusion, the Muslims requested Eid al-Fitr, the end of their holy month of Ramadan.

But the Board made the right call, because it undid a policy that needed undoing. Purely religious-observance occasions should not be designated public school holidays. It’s not a matter of secularism run amok or suppressed religious expression. It’s a matter of what’s appropriate for a non-sectarian school system and, frankly, who’s next? Buddhists and animists might already have been queuing for their designated day of cultural bridge-building. And who’s to say what the perverse egalitarianism of atheists would have yielded?

And even more to the point, if there’s anything that our students don’t need, it’s more days off.

Hardly Journalism’s Finest Hour

Among all the possible scenarios to be played out in the Valerie Plame CIA-leak investigation, the one that always seemed most likely has come to pass. Reporter Judith Miller will write a book.

Karl Rove might skate and Lewis Libby may scoot — and Dick Cheney likely can pull a plausible-deniability card from his sleeve. But the Miller Lite of confidential-sources martyrdom was the wire-to-wire constant. She will take a leave from the New York Times to work on her version of who winked, nodded and said what to whom. Probably include some major musings on the First Amendment as well as a first person peek inside the Alexandria Detention Center. Larry King will doubtless get the first promotional pop.

But it won’t be a tell-all tome. That’s because she doesn’t remember all. For example, she maintains (in a recent New York Times piece) that she “didn’t think” she got Plame’s name first from Scooter Libby. She wrote: “I said (in grand jury testimony) I believed the information came from another source whom I could not recall.”

Oh.

Maybe it will be revealed in her book.

No less fundamental to Miller’s credibility outsourcing is the question about the timing of the waiver of confidentiality that Miller received from Libby, Vice President Cheney’s top aide. Libby’s lawyer says the waiver had been there all along. Miller actually had a chance to clear that up at a news conference but punted the question back to her lawyer who passed.

However you rationalize and nuance it, how many people would have opted for nearly three months of contempt-of-court slammer time without exhausting all recourse? Who wouldn’t have checked to make sure a (White House) source – not to be confused with a revenge-wary, conscience-stricken whistle-blower — really wanted you jailed?

Unless 85 days of down time at the detention center was a career move.

Unless journalistic “martyrdom” was the ticket that would override the humiliation of being told by your executive editor that you were off the Iraq-and-WMD beat because some of your reporting turned out to be, well, wrong. Recall that Miller had allowed herself to be a conduit for Almad Chalabi, the exiled leader of the Iraqi National Congress, who had been feeding her self-serving, faux intelligence about Saddam Hussein and WMD. Miller aided and abetted the rush to war, if you will.

The Fourth Estate didn’t need this case. To many Americans, the media’s societal standing rivals that of FEMA cronies and telemarketers.

However unique and critical its calling, the press – which has its own amendment, the 1st – is still not above the law. There is no exemption that permits journalists to ignore a good faith subpoena in a criminal case.

The lesson yet to be learned is this: If you’re going to the mattresses over a protected source, it better be seen as an ethical stand for a greater good. However, when the confidential source is no whistle-blower, but an agenda-driven Administration operative, the moral high ground becomes an ethical sinkhole.

And for those keeping score, chances for a federal shield law for reporters and their sources has rarely looked so remote. So be it.

Perhaps Miller could devote an entire chapter to that.

Tarver’s Parlay

Antonio Tarver, the likable and loquacious light heavyweight champion from Tampa, has announced his next two fights: Sylvester Stallone and Mike Tyson.

In December he starts filming the sixth Rocky movie, “Rocky Balboa.” He’ll play “Mason Dixon,” a boxer – not a disc jockey.

In February or March Tarver will play himself against Tyson, the former heavyweight champion and convicted rapist, who is now the biggest grossing tomato can in the history of pay-per-view television. He’s not even good burlesque any more.

It’s understandable that the 35-year-old Tarver, who’s eyeing a post-boxing career in show business, would want to max out on his career’s remaining window of opportunity. The light heavyweight division is notoriously challenged for big money fights, so absent a barnstorming venture with Roy Jones Jr., he’s relegated to moving up to the heavyweights.

So he’ll add pounds and ease into it against Balboa and Tyson — an aging fictional fighter and an over-the-hill fraud. Yet another forgettable Rocky movie never looked so good.

Yo.

Prom-inent Decision

A limousine load of “attaboys” for that Uniondale, N.Y., principal who canceled Kellenberg Memorial High School’s prom. Not unexpectedly, a lot of students and parents disagreed. Very vocally.

Too bad.

Brother Kenneth M. Hoagland, the principal of the Catholic high school in upscale Long Island, said he was fed up with the “flaunting of affluence” as well as “bacchanalian aspects.”

Proms, as any contemporary parent of teenagers knows, aren’t what they used to be. That rite-of-passage, adult dress-up with Dad’s car and prissy chaperones now seems like time-capsule material. Apparently in Uniondale it was not uncommon for students to rent a party house in the Hamptons. It was a given that there would be pre-prom cocktail parties and amply-stocked limos. Parents sometimes chartered boats for late-night “booze cruises.”

The problem obviously is the parents, too many of whom were using their kids’ proms as another forum for and barometer of conspicuous consumption. The right house, the right neighborhood, the right car, the right trophy spouse, the right country club and the right private school.

Realtors, car dealers and country clubs are certainly not going to weigh in.

So schools better, and Brother Hoagland did.

In effect, he said to parents: “Thank you for paying these big tuition bills. But you’ve bought more than a designer diploma for your child, and you’ve purchased more than an excellent college-prep curriculum. Your child is also exposed to a set of values that we trust will prepare them well for what they will encounter in life – including a culture of excess and vanity.

“We just didn’t think that a lot of you parents would be part of the problem.

“We hope you buy in to what we’re doing – because we’re not selling out.”

Don’t Bring The Bling

What to make of the National Basketball Association’s new player dress code?

For openers, it’s an employer-employee issue, with ample precedent in the marketplace. In the NBA’s case, the league is requiring its player-employees to wear “business casual” attire when involved in team or league business. It’s called image.

Disney has one; so does IBM. Alas, so does the NBA, and that’s the problem.

The NBA is a billion-dollar enterprise, and it doesn’t want to screw it up. Having a black, hip-hop product in a largely white, mainstream marketplace can be dicey. How the NBA wishes it still had Michael and Magic, wondrous, race-transcending talents who also styled in three-piece suits. The best of both worlds – court and corporate appeal.

Now they’re saddled with the current generation who are undeterred about having less to swagger about. The product, arguably, has diminished, while the image is the antithesis of Jordan and Johnson. Too many player ensembles consist of baggy sweatpants, throw-back jerseys, doo-rags, indoor sun glasses, baseball lids on sideways and gold chains and medallions that would shame Mr. T.

Whatever code language the NBA chooses, this is what it’s really saying: “We don’t look at this as a black fashion statement by a given generation that is misunderstood by a bunch of intolerant, clueless, old white guys. To too many of our sponsors, corporate-suite owners and paying customers, the hip-hop look is a thug look, conjuring up misogynistic attitudes and in-your-face boorishness. You don’t have to watch BET Videos to come to that conclusion. They don’t like the look, and they won’t underwrite the league in perpetuity. This is a business, as every millionaire player well knows.”

And, by the way, the NBA’s right to impose its new code in business-related contexts is part of the collective bargaining agreement with the players.

Author: opinionstogo